


i wanted to give you everything

by epeolotry



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: F/M, Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 18:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3860542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epeolotry/pseuds/epeolotry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one else has slipped into every crack, every fissure, twisted into every fiber of him.</p><p>The first and last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i wanted to give you everything

**Author's Note:**

> i don't need another friend / when most of them, i can barely keep up with
> 
> i'm perfectly able to hold my own hand / but i still can't kiss my own neck

 

 **First**. 

 

Foreign hands pull him from the tangled darkness and thrust him back into the realm of the living. Hands of nitril gloves and surgical tools, voice of low, honeyed cadences and innocent hesitancy.

For the briefest moment, he is nine years old again on a hospital bed. His father’s hands cup his plump cheeks and he is soothed with murmured assurances.

 

_**I love y** —_

 

The words rise up in his throat and get caught in the middle.

 

But these palms at his cheeks are not his father’s and he is bleeding on the couch of a stranger. The familiar assurance still lingers, though, in the firm, careful touch of his savior.

 

As she leaves him and he drifts off uneasily, he breathes her fading scent in, grasping tightly at the memory of her warm touch like a desperate child.

 

His father slipped away so quickly; he’s not ready to let _her_ , Claire, whoever she is, to slip through his fingers, too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 **Last**. 

 

 

He knows her, now.

 

And she, she knows _all_ of him.

 

He has bared himself to her – not just the ugly underside that only the criminal scum of the Kitchen have seen, but the tame façade he adopts for the sake of the day.

No one else has slipped into every crack, every fissure, twisted into  _every fiber of him_ – everyone else has been dealt only bits and pieces. It is only she who has felt the gaping wounds and tasted the inside of his mouth, who has known his fears and has _been_ his comfort. He has presented _all_ the pieces of himself, broken and bleeding, and with a deft touch, she set to putting him back together again.

 

She knows him.

And this is why she cannot love him.

  

Her discomfort at his self-professed mission doesn’t confound him – it makes him yearn. Yearn for a way to appease her, to keep her, because he so desperately wants to, needs to. But he cannot change what has been etched in his bone, iron wrought and resolute.

 

(But he pines. Pines for the wistful ‘more,’ the ‘more’ she could offer in her quiet laugh and her gentle touch. In her unmarked past and hopeful future. He could get lost in her, and he wants to, he so desperately _wants to_.)

 

Despite her clear hesitancy, her swelling disquiet, the words still rise in him, in a desperate attempt to escape before it’s too late.

 

_I love you, Claire. Claire, I love you. **I love y** —_

 

And _yet_.

It spills from her mouth first, a worried, halting declaration.

 

“I just…don't think I can let myself fall in love with someone, who's so damn close to becoming what he hates.”  

She has all the pieces. And she does not want them.

 

 

Now, the words die on his lips.

 

 

Unsaid and caught in his mouth, their remnants forever cursed to linger in his hitched breath.

His eyes imperceptibly prick with moisture.

 

 

Silence hangs in the air numbly, before he breaks it, an icy steel in his voice. It is forged not to pierce her, but to protect _him_ , crumpled and lost, deteriorating just underneath.

 

 

“You’re right.

  

You shouldn’t.” 

(But he already has.)

 

 

And just like his father, she is gone.

 

Slipped away like sand between his trembling, fool hands.

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted to give you everything / but i still stand in awe of superficial things.
> 
> [wye oak; civilian](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mssm8Ml5sOo).


End file.
